Fred Ezeh, Abuja
National Agency for Control of AIDS (NACA) has placed a demand for $2.4 billion to enable it identify and treat no fewer than 540,000 People Living with HIV (PLHIV) in Nigeria.
NACA said that estimated number of test needed to identify these people living with HIV is 50 million. This, it added, was in order to reach the UNAIDS target epidemic control in next three years
Director General of NACA, Dr Aliyu Gambo, disclosed the information in the 2020 Quarterly HIV Factsheet, presented to stakeholders and the media in Abuja, on Tuesday.
According to the document, a total of $6.2billion was spent to identify and treat 60 percent (1,080,000) of the estimated PLHIV from 2005 to 2018. However, over $5 billion of the above (N2.1 trillion) came from international donors.
On the status of the epidemic in the country, the Agency revealed that estimated 1,800,000 people are currently living with HIV/AIDS in the country and 13 out of every 1, 000 persons selected at random are likely to test positive for HIV.
The factsheet also showed that Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) initiation had declined from expected 39,450 to 21,495 in April, indicating 45.5 per cent drop due to the CIVID 19 pandemic.